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I can’t remember who it was, but I remember talking to a D1GP driver who has been overseas a few times, and he said that one of the reasons he loves drifting so much is that it allows him to travel and have lots of fun while making friends all over the world.

I understand what he means now, after I recently travelled all the way to Norway from Japan to drift in one of the world-famous Gatebil events. I remember reading about Gatebil many years ago in Max Power magazine, but I never thought I’d end up actually driving in one.

After taking care of the Norwegian drift team “Driftmonkey” when they came to Japan earlier this year, and had a lot of fun drifting with them at Ebisu Circuit, team owner Ove Harlem sent me a message asking if I’d like to (telling me, more like it) come over and drive of their matching team Supras in Norway. The team’s regular driver Reidar Andresen had to miss the July Gatebil event, so the three cars on the team would be piloted by regular member Anders Klerud, with two guests, Formula D driver Ken Gushi and myself.

What made this even more awesome was that the July Gatebil event is the biggest one of the year, and it’s held at the Rusdskogen Motorsenter, a beautiful track in southern Norway that was planned by F1 track designer Hermann Tilke. It looks like something out of Gran Turismo, with lots of elevation changes through forest and rock walls, with a big final corner where you can bake it up in front of the crowd. The Supra I was driving had a full Brian Crower 3.4L 2JZ engine with an enormous Garrett turbo, which made short work of the tyres, and made getting from one corner to the next a very fast experience.

Please enjoy this video of the event made by the team media guy Luke from Zero Media (thanks for the Jaffa Cakes mate). I took a whole lot of in-car video too, so I’ll be making my own video as well. It was an amazing event, and I hope I can make it over to Norway again sometime soon.

Ever wonder what all those Japanese guys are talking about on all those videos? Want to know what some of them really think about drifting? Here’s a look behind the curtain at the recent Formula Drift Japan round held at Fuji Speedway, thanks to Yousuke Suga at SC Films.

Here’s a short video from the 2014 Summer Drift Matsuri at Ebisu Circuit on Higashi Course. One of the biggest reasons I go to Matsuri these days is because Higashi is usually only open for drifting during those events, apart from the occasional High Speed Drift Club.

Rain on Higashi can be a lot of fun, since tyres don’t wear down and cars don’t overheat quite as much. A wet surface even means I can easily click fourth coming down turn four. It does make it a bit sketchy to drive though!

The three original Noriyaro Raw Drift videos now almost have a million combined views. Not bad for a bunch of stuff I just shot for fun on a cheap camera! If you have about half an hour you want to kill, you can watch the playlist here.

Check out this edit of the Gatebil event at Mantorp Park in Sweden last month! This was the one I took Tsuyoshi Tezuka to, so he could drift the new Team Driftmonkey guest driver car.

私がＤ１ＧＰ手塚強選手をスウェーデンの改造車イベントに連れて行ってきました！手塚さんはチームドリフトモンキーのゲストドライバーでした。

I love the epic slide starting at 1:13 with all three Driftmonkey cars. That’s me on the interior GoPro with Tezuka.

I didn’t actually drive at the Mantorp event and only rode passenger with Tezuka to get used to the car so I could drive at the next Gatebil in Rudskogen. Since I couldn’t drift myself at Mantorp though, I ended up getting pretty good at the Crazy Cart we had at the booth, which you can see at the 3:24 mark.